March 8th, 2017
CANNON BALL - Bakken oil could be flowing through the Dakota Access Pipeline within a week, but Standing Rock still hopes for a legal miracle as the United Nations condemns what it calls widespread discrimination and North Dakota’s militarized response.
As Standing Rock’s legal options diminish, an injunction filed by Cheyenne River Tribe, part of the Great Sioux Nation, was once again turned down by federal judges on Tuesday. Previous injunctions filed by the tribe to stop…
March 2nd, 2017
FARGO - Lamar Heidersheid brought his 15-year-old daughter Angelina to the Fargo Community Sweat Lodge for the first time last week.
He wanted the experience to be special for her, and to bring their Cherokee culture one step closer to heart. Instead, nearing the end of their fourth round in the sweat lodge, they were raided by Fargo Police. A fellow Native American, Zebediah Gartner, was arrested, and the group spent at least 45 minutes in the cold, wearing little clothing and covered…
March 2nd, 2017
FARGO - Militarized police armed with emergency declarations, beanbags and bullets, zip ties and presidential orders, have scattered most of the camps pitted against the Dakota Access Pipeline, but local hatred against the movement remains.
And it’s being promoted across the state, from rural farmer to urban politician.
As the activists’ camps consolidate to its last bastion, Sacred Stone Camp, where the movement originally began, no one has been killed. Many have been injured, and…
February 25th, 2017
FARGO - Barking dogs don’t bite, but they’re noisy and excitable. The day Zebediah Gartner, an Anishinaabe from Fargo, was released from Cass County Jail after being pulled from a sweat lodge by Fargo police, the “dogs” began to bark. He received threats and slander from Fargo-Moorhead residents.
“A couple people talking nonsense but I didn’t give them the time of the day,” Gartner said. “They’re just talking crap about my mom, and talking about how stupid we are.”…
February 24th, 2017
FARGO - Fargo Police pulled Native Americans out of a sweat lodge during a spiritual ceremony Thursday night, and took one to jail wearing nothing but undershorts for resisting arrest.
The resisting arrest charge was dropped for insufficient evidence by the city early Friday, but Zebediah Gartner, an Anishinaabe, pled guilty to a class B misdemeanor for theft of property, which stemmed from a January 24 incident involving a disputed two or three pieces of chicken taken from Cashwise…
February 23rd, 2017
CANNON BALL - Twenty hours before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ deadline to evacuate the Oceti camps, the thunder beings arrived.
And geese returned home a month or more early.
Signs, activists say, like the the herded buffalo that charged near law enforcement in November 2016, or the golden eagle who perched for hours on a nearby fence, that nature is listening.
On the final day for the Standing Rock camps’ fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline, native songs and flames filled…
February 22nd, 2017
FARGO - Choose to be oblivious. Choose to learn. Choose a story. Learn a cause. Choose to read. Choose anger. Choose to reject glacier calving. Choose to believe in women’s rights. Choose free speech. Choose big oil, big pharmaceuticals, America First, TV, alcohol, marijuana, fast cars, family, gay rights, indigenous rights, white power, terrorism…
Choose a pet.
From melting storied glaciers to I.C.E. deportations, fake news to alternative facts further polarizing political and social…
February 22nd, 2017
Four years ago, Adam Martin lost everything. He was homeless, had no car, no license, no job, no phone, and lost custody of his children. With five felonies on his criminal record and an eviction, prospects for getting a job and apartment were grim. The only positive was that he had two weeks of sobriety under his belt, a landmark for someone who struggled with addiction for fifteen years.
Martin was planning on getting drunk, but had an epiphany instead. “I decided that I should put…
February 15th, 2017
CANNON BALL - Standing Rock’s fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline has all the ingredients of legend, with only the ending remaining be be told. Centuries past, bards would be tuning their lutes, preparing lyrics, in fact, modern singers such as Neil Young, Dave Matthews, the Black Eyed Peas, Trevor Hall, and many Native American talents have already immortalized Standing Rock’s resistance.
“If you are a rock, stand up like a mountain,” Hall sang about Standing Rock.
Two…
February 9th, 2017
Alt-White: The Siege of North Dakota. Part Three in the series on racism in North Dakota. Inescapable comparisons between the political, racial, and economic sectors of the 1920s and 2010s. Local resident hunts Fargo’s Nazis, posts alert advertisements around Fargo.
FARGO - The day North Dakota women marched on Bismarck, a lone vehicle flying a Confederate flag cruised down Broadway, according to Fargo emergency dispatch. The pickup truck was stopped at Fourth Avenue when a middle-aged…